Growing

The changes in Nora over the last few weeks have been truly incredible.

I've been around a lot of babies in my life. But now that I have one of my own, to know like the back of my hand, to see her every day... I am in complete awe of the rate of development of a human infant in its first months of life.

Seriously, though. One day, she can't do something. The next day, she can.

As an example, let's take rolling from back to belly. She's been rolling consistently from belly to back for a while now, but she couldn't go the other way. For a week or so, we watched as she got closer and closer to flipping herself onto her belly. She'd crane her head and neck backward, she'd rotate her torso and her legs as far as she could, but she just couldn't get that hip to swing over to flip herself. She was so close, but she couldn't do it.

When we woke her up in her crib on Wednesday morning, she couldn't do it. At bedtime on Wednesday night, she couldn't do it. But then, when I went in to check on her sometime on Wednesday evening, after she had been sleeping for a while, this is how I found her:

Out cold, sleeping on her belly. With her arm stuck through the crib slats, to boot. Suddenly, she could do it. And now we can't get her to stop. Here's a quick video of her showing off her new skills:
She's also improving her hand coordination every day. EVERY DAY she gets better at grasping things, bringing them to her mouth, etc. Last week, I was feeding her a bottle (rare, as we generally save those for daycare and at home, I usually nurse her), and noticed that she was technically holding it on her own.

Admittedly, she doesn't quite understand what she's doing yet--meaning she's not doing it purposely--but still!

Oh, and remember when I was so stressed out about breaking her of the swaddle? (I was also stressed about all other things sleep, but that turned out to be related to a surprise ear infection!) Well, shortly after that post, we tried to put her to bed one night without her swaddle, and it.went.terribly. It was horrible, and my stress about the situation increased. But we figured why fix what isn't broken, and continued to swaddle her.

A little over a week ago, we had her 4-month well-baby doctor's appointment and mentioned the swaddle to Nora's pediatrician. First, she told us not to worry about it. She said that if it's what makes Nora comfortable and helps her sleep well, go with it. She said that babies WILL grow out of it and assured us that we would not someday be swaddling a 5-year-old child. However, when I mentioned to her that Nora had been busting out of it at least once a night for the past week or so, she said, "Well, maybe she's telling you it's time."

That night, she was fussy from her immunizations, so we stuck with the swaddle. But the next night? We went cold turkey, replacing the swaddle blanket with a sleep sack. She slept from 8 p.m. to 3:30 a.m. with no problems at all. We were amazed. She did have some issues from 3:30-7:30 a.m., but we stuck with it, and the following night, she slept all the way through. What a big girl! (And such a freaking rockstar.) We haven't swaddled her since.

One thing that Nora hasn't been doing is "talking." She hasn't been a very vocal baby--she giggles, but we don't hear a lot of cooing. But sure enough, suddenly, today... she was "chatting" all afternoon and evening. It was hilarious and so, so cute.

This is such a fun age. I couldn't love her more.